Sunday, October 5, 2008

The Face Of Coca Cola

Hilda Clark was the "face" of Coca Cola from 1895 to 1903. She was the first woman to be featured on one of their tin advertising trays and also appeared in print ads for the beverage. Hilda was born in 1872 in Leaveneworth, Kansas, the daughter of a baker. The lure of the big city took her to Boston and a successful career as a music hall singer and actress. She started modeling for Coca Cola when she was 23 and continued for 8 years, all the while active in Boston society. She retired from both her stage career and modeling in 1903, upon her marriage to a millionaire railway director, the nephew of the then governor of New York.

The illustration above shows Hilda Clark as she appeared in a chromolithographed print advertisement for Coca Cola in the late 1890s.